Baked Tofu and Nishime Vegetables with Millet

A few weeks ago I picked up a cookbook called The Healthy Hedonist. I had roasted, fried and boiled tofu many times before but a recipe in the book for baked tofu sounded really good. It was simple a block of tofu (pressed for 30 minutes between two plates with a can of soup on top to weigh it down) cut into triangles and marinaded for 30 minutes in sesame oil, brown rice vinegar, apple juice, mirin, shoyu and toasted sesame oil. The recipe called for a very small about of toasted sesame oil, but I didn't have any regular sesame oil and thus used about 3 tablespoons of it, replacing the regular. Myra Kornfeld, the author of the cookbook, says not to cook with toasted sesame oil and juts to use it as a condiment. She might be right but I've been using it all Summer and appear unscathed. A little goes a long way, however, so using regular and just adding a small about of toasted sesame oil is more economical. It is then baked at 375 for 40 minutes. Really good.

To accompany this I cooked up some Nishime vegetables. This is a popular cooking style in macrobiotic cooking. In a large heavy bottomed pot, place a piece of Kombu sea vegetable. Then layer different types of vegetables that you would like to eat. Seasonal, local vegetables are of course best and if you are eating macrobioticly you of course want to pay attention to balancing yin and yang qualities. You could layer them from the most yin to most yang or just put the hardiest vegetables at the bottom. I used red onion, yellow squash, carrots, white button mushrooms and spring onions. The last of these might be a bit odd but I had them and wanted to eat them.

Millet was my grain of choice for this meal. I like millet a lot, but mostly because it makes a really delicious porridge the next morning. Just put it in a pot with a little soy milk or water, add any nuts or dried fruits you want just like you would with oatmeal and wait for it to heat up. So good.

Berlin

I am now in Berlin, currently sitting in an apartment that I will be inhabiting for one month before moving into another until the end of June. It is a very nice place, in Prenzlauerberg with lots of cool cafes and shops and things but unfortunately no internet aside from some untrustworthy wireless that can only be reached from my roommates room. And it is there where I sit now nursing my cold. I have some more recipes and things from the Summer I would like to publish but the connection here is too slow for picturse so I will have to wait and go to a cafe this week.

Summer Salad

It's labor day and my sister's wedding as well as my departure to Germany are fast approaching. It is hard to believe that it is September already. My sister and her fiance to Lancaster from Philadelphia yesterday for a week of preparations and are staying with my parents and I for a few days before moving to the bed and breakfast. My dad had bought some delicious and fresh local lima beans from market a week ago. He also asked me on Saturday to pick up three pounds of green beans for the week which, in combination of the lima beans, reminded me of a recipe I had seen in Nigella Lawson's cookbook Forever Summer. Nigella Lawson is basically my idol. I adore her. She is very real, very beautiful, has amazing recipes and great stories to go along with them. She is passionate about food but not annoyingly over enthusiastic and her recipes, aside from sometimes including odd britishy ingredients (less so in her newer books), are simple and wonderful. How to be a Domestic Goddess was pracitcally my bible growing up. But back to the point! I had seen a recipe for Squash and Two Beans Salad and now just had to make it for the first night of wedding week. I used:

2 medium yellow squash
2 zucchini
a medium bowlful of green beans
a pint of lima beans (shelled just as Nigella insists upon)
olive oil
basil
mint
salt and pepper
1 or 2 lemons

I cut the squash and zucchini into thirds, then halved the thirds, and then made thick sticks out of these pieces following Nigella's suggestion. I threw them into a roasting pan, drizzled enough olive oil overtop to make a shallow pool in the bottom of the roasting pan (Nigella says 1/3 of a cup but measuring just creates one more thing to clean in my opinion) and mixed it about so everything was nice and saturated. I pinched somes sea salt overtop and put it in a 350 oven for half an hour. In the meantime I boiled the green beans and lima beans in salted water in separate pots until they were done to my preference. I think the lima beans were about 5 minutes and the green beans about 7 but just taste them and see. When each was done I drained it and then plunged the colander into a bowl of ice water, swishing it around so that the beans would get a nice cold bath but I wouldn't have to go fishing for them in the bowl after. Now it's time to peel the lima beans! After they are cooked the covering comes of very easily, just pinch it and it pops out leaving a nice soft bright green (sometimes white) interior.

After the squash cools, gently mix the squash and beans together in a bowl. Squeeze the juice from a lemon or two over the salad. Nigella calls for one lemon but I ended up using two as they were small and I thought it could use a bit more zip. Next chop up a handful each of mint and basil and toss with the salad. Nigella just used basil, but I had some fresh mint and think that it was a very nice addition. Add salt and pepper to taste. I had this salad sitting out for a good 5 or 6 hours before we ate it, which was not a problem at all. I could say it made it better becuase everything had a good long time to marinade, but that could just be a lie since I only sneaked a bean or two right after making it.

Later I made a great marinaded tofu dish to serve alongside the salad, but I will have to tell you more about that another day. Have a great holiday!